A stop at the cathedral in Strasbourg turned into an epic effort by Claire to get a room booked for the night with the help of staff at the tourist office in the square. Then what seemed like 100 turns …
I am several posts behind, but will catch up soon. When this is published we will be somewhere over the Pacific, after an adventurous and sublime three months crossing half of the red center outback by bicycle, and from Indian Ocean to Pacific by vehicle. The photo Claire saying goodbye at one of our favorite seaside camps. This is our third goodbye to Australia. Will we come again?
Claire has a magazine assignment to write about Australian working dogs, and that brought us to the Old Sniff Classic sheepdog trials at Dean, Victoria. That is the reason we were there, but the most memorable story for me was …
After weeks of wind and rain in South Australia and Victoria, we finally got a beautiful, if cool, day in the delightful Mallacoota coastal town and Croajingolong National Park. Much of the trail was along cliffs above beaches, surf and …
Gusty winds began to batter our little van as we turned from the Nullarbor south on the Ayer Peninsula. Our plans to find a bush camp near the Southern Ocean were forgotten as the gusts increased to gale force, according …
Sixteen years ago we rode our tandem, Zippy, pulling a B.O.B. trailer, right-the-way-’round Australia, around 19,000 kilometers. By the time we reached Perth and beyond in Western Australia, we had perfected our outback riding and bush camping technique and …
Our first reason for coming to Australia was to bicycle The Great Central road, Australia’s longest. At over 1000 miles of outback Australia with up to five days of riding between minimal services, it was right up our alley: requiring …
September 16, Laverton, WA: Finished The Great Central Road (and some add on) 1834 kilometers, something over 1,000 miles, not sure how much, most of it sand and rock. Twenty-three wonderful bush camps. We’re knackered, Don’t let this first section …
Warburton to Tjukayirla (chuke a lara) From Waraburton We still have a couple of weeks on dirt and we have been on the road for a month. We do take rest days, four at Ayers Rock, but it is just …
The Aboriginals we encounter are a bit shy, but friendly enough, waving vigorously through broken rear windows when they pass us on the road; big laughs and a cloud of dust.
Photos of events and places on the Great Central Road in australia
Claire: Big Weather When we realized we would get to Docker River just as the store was closing on Saturday, and that we’d have to stay an extra day to wait for opening on Monday, we decided to take our …
Yulara to Docker River On our last bit of bitumen before The Great Central proper, we realized that at by the time we reached Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) late in the day, the few overlanders and locals would be long …
so we soldier on, making our own decisions, hauling our own stuff, and alternating suffering with the elation of being free in one of the world’s great places. Ah, decisions.
Bob: We left Glen Helen Homestead loaded with three days of water and food. The bitumen soon faded into the distance behind us, and we began what would be an unexpectedly horrible road. Good thing Claire found a nice Aussie …
By late afternoon we were knackered and found a quiet acceptable spot for bush camp, built a quick little fire and put our first billy to boil, set up the tent and were chowing down on beans, tinned chicken and raw yam and two cups of tea laden with sugar and milk powder.
We rode The Great Central Road dirt track (one of Australia’s longest) across The Great Victoria Desert in the direction of Perth. 1600 kilometers of dirt with very little in the way of services, food or water. We had five weeks of outback cycling and camping adventure, followed by a tiny van road trip from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean revisiting old haunts, and both new and old friends.
We’re in an area called Pallavaram, a mix of mostly low end hotels, open markets, mixed businesses, a few beggars, wandering shitting cows, mostly mud streets (the monsoon just hit) and the constant noise of all manner of vehicle horns, and a few bicycle bells.
Our main goal in coming to Ladakh was not to bicycle over Khardung La, but to experience the evolving culture of the western Tibetan Plateau in India. Kardung La was just sort of in the way, or better put, in …
While working on New Bohemians today I ran across this previous post. The quote from Jorge Luis Borges evoked memories: they flashed across my inner travel screen, not in pixels, but in soft amorphous remembered images, scents, labored lungs and heart, sweat soaked, cold shivers; wind cooled and sun warmed. Smiles from faces never to be seen again… I thought I’d re-post. Share.
Ya’an was one of the first rural cities we stayed in after leaving Chengdu on our tandem to ride across Tibetan Sichuan. Luchan, a harder hit town is just to the north. The cities on a fertile rising plain that soon gives way to steep foothills leading to the Tibetan Plateau.
As usual when bush camping, I eased in and out of sleep throughout the night, keeping time with the changing positions of stars and Milky Way. It cooled through the night and we snuggled off and on, spoke quietly about the stars, and the shadows on the canyon walls cast by the odd passing vehicle, watching for a cessation of movement or change in motor sound.
Canyon del Pato is Hell on a tandem, pretty much two days of Hell. It was the best way north in the Andes from Huaraz without backtracking to a road lined with illegal coca plantations and bandits; not our favorite type of cultural interaction.
When we travel on our tandem in difficult places, like Tibet, and SE Asia, keeping the bike clean is the last thing I’m thinking about at the end of a hard day: food, a place to get horizontal and sleep are first priority, maybe changing money, buying food for the next day, trying to understand your host, the market vendors; all this before sunset since it’s often cold then, or sometimes not the best time for a gringo to be wandering the streets. So this is often when the derailleuer looks like after 3 or 4 thousand miles.
I am beginning to dismantle Zippy, world touring tandem, in preparation for our next self supported tour, this time South America. Before each tour, I completely dismantle Zippy for three reasons: to find our which parts need replacing so I can order them and fix the worn parts, catch any impending failures of frame, rims or drive-train, and to re-familiarize myself with every part. Since many of the places we tour are hundreds of miles from a proper bike shop, I have to be able to fix pretty much anything. Anyone who owns a tandem will tell you tandems need more attention than single bikes; I might have to rebuild the hub somewhere in the high Andes, or the middle of the Amazon basin, while being munched on by ants and mosquitoes and critters we’ve never seen before.
Some times a variety of events make trains the best choice for long distance cyclists. We no longer have anything to prove by riding every inch of the way across the U.S., or around and across other countries, continents. Been there, done that. We are now travelers, who happen to believe bicycle is the best way to see the world. However, there are other transportation methods that have a place in our hearts. Some of best experiences have been traveling by train.
From supposedly reliable intelligence, Abrams was able to follow the progress of troops and supplies south, and judge where and when the North planned to attack over the border into Vietnam. To paraphrase from A Better War, Lewis Sorley: Troops advanced south in waves 500 to 600, moving at 12.2 kilometers per day, mostly by foot, the trucks saved for supplies and ammunition. We were able to move perhaps 60 Kilometers on the unimproved section, partly because our load was not on our feet, but on our bicycle, and partly because we had no backup supplies; we had to get out of that jungle in short order.
Because of our most recent travels in Asia on our tandem bicycle, I have developed a new interest in the Vietnam War, really the Indochina War of my youth. My draft board called me in 1964. I presented myself, got on a bus and taken for a physical and mental evaluation. I was just out of hospital for a bleeding ulcer. They didn’t know how to cure ulcers in those days, and they knew military food would kill me: 4F. I have always had some survivor’s guilt, partly because I have seen the toll that particular war took on many of the surviving draftees. The vets I have shared this feeling with have said I didn’t miss anything, and to let it go. I think I have. Maybe traveling there, seeing the land and the people involved has had something to do with my coming to terms with those feelings. My appreciation for anyone who fought there is deep. It was one helluva place to have to fight a war.
Video of Bob Rogers and Claire Rogers riding their tandem bicycle through Tibet and SE Asia
Our risk was nothing compared to the average Laotian farmer, wandering children, firewood gathering women, who know their next footstep can mean death, or for some worse, maiming, in a poor country where everyone must contribute.
Some facts: 270 million of these bombies were dropped on a country the size of Utah. Of the more than 50,000 people killed or maimed by the bombings, 20,000 have occurred after the end of the war. An average of one person a day is killed or maimed in Laos now, nearly 40 years later.
In late 1995 we were riding our tandem, Zippy across remote Rio Grande, West Texas. We were 30 miles from any town, enjoying the warmth and sun, racing winter in New Mexico. A seventies era car passed us slowly, dented and rusted, and pulled over on the opposite shoulder a hundred yards ahead. Being alone, on our bicycle for about 11,000 since leaving our home in Washington State six months before, we naturally looked carefully at unusual cars and unusual behavior. As we neared the car, a man in his late 60’s emerged from the car and waved us down. He looked harmless, even cute, so we stopped and smiled as he approached with his antique camera, and took this picture.
Litang is far from a tourist town. The roads are so bad that the Han Chinese find it quite an adventure to travel there via modern SUV to view the, strange to them, Tibetans. They found it quite strange to find two Westerners, a couple, riding a tandem bicycle, on the roads and elevations they found so daunting. They are daunting, and took a physical toll on us, leading to a well deserved rest in a town we came to love, and found difficult to leave, despite the high elevation and wonky weather.
This family took us in, hungry, tired, near hypothermia at nearly 15,000 feet elevation in Tibetan Sichuan, China. We are still thankful.
So sad to hear of the crowd disaster and all the deaths in Cambodia. In our three weeks or so in the country we found the people to be hard working, cheerful and generally happy despite sometimes difficult living conditions. Like most Southeast Asians, they love their festivals, and the Water Festival is most beloved. This is an unusual occurrence and should not deter anyone from visiting this wonderful country. We’d go back in a minute. เทศกาลน้ำ
The family on this, approximately 25 long by four feet wide boat, are fishing the Mekong river in Cambodia. They fish from early morning to dark daily. They will find a, hopefully safe, place to tie up for the night. The boat is their home, their only home. The eat, sleep, cook, make love, give birth and die there. The only time they touch land is to sell their fish. In some places buyers come to the river. There are many such boats on the Mekong, in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Sometimes a government tries to take them from the river, but they return.
This is a re-post from about a year ago when we were still on the Tibetan Plateau. We re-post it here for those who might have missed the original. If you wish to read the complete posts of In Search of Shangri-la, click on the link under Adventures at left.
We’ve called this often grueling trip from Chengdu, the Back Road to Shangri-la. A few days ago, we entered the high gate to the garden of Shangri-la. We topped out above 15,000 feet each day, and often stayed there for hours.
There will be more mountains to come, and some will probably seem harder than this one. Zippy is making strange noises from the drive-train, and we fear we have put him under too much strain this time.
We are sometimes tired, but feeling stronger every day. We’ve reached that magical three-week point in a long challenging bicycle tour, when we are in the zone, when we feel pretty much ready for anything.
people think of the Tibetan people and the Tibetan Plateau as being only within the lines drawn by the Chinese government, the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Both the Plateau and the Tibetan people are spread over several other provinces. The government encourages Hans to move into Tibetan lands with various incentives, and by building new cities deep in formerly exclusive Tibetan lands. But the fingers of Himalayas we crossed to climb the Plateau, and the difficulty in building and maintaining roads, have kept this part of Tibetan land Tibetan.
When we awoke it was still raining, spattering the mud puddles of the courtyard with discouraging regularity. We couldn’t imagine another day of near hypothermia, and more hills and bad roads. But, we didn’t want to stay another day with the road workers, nice as they were, so we packed up our filthy gear and steeled ourselves for the day. By the time we were ready to go, the rain had stopped, and there was even a hint of blue over the first hill. The road workers were spot on with their description of the road ahead, a first on this trip.
We used Bob’s jacket printed with a map of the world on it to try to convey where we were from, where we’d been and where we planned to go. I have no idea if they’d ever seen a map before. It doesn’t really matter to them, their world is an isolated village along a road between two passes and 50 kilometers from the nearest town. It sounds romantic: going to sleep to the sounds of chanting and waking to the sounds of milking. But these women’s lives are a gritty existence that our culture hasn’t known for generations. Hauling wood, water, and food up the ladder to the living space, making butter and curds, grinding grain, hand washing clothes, keeping the fire going, cooking… Mundane, routine, weather-dependent, smoke-filled and layered with years of grime.
We were in the middle to nowhere for three days, climbed more passes than were supposed to be there, were never below about 14,000 feet and bad weather surprised us. The road to Shangri-la is always filled with life and surprise.
Follow the whole story over the next three posts.
we’re eating pork now, or any kind of protein for that matter, and we eat whatever vegetables they bring us. At the grocery stores, we study and poke the packages and hope they’ll sustain us through a night of camping. Yogurt and cookies (a whole roll) is a before bed tradition of carbohydrate loading. …push a pedal stroke for us, we’ll need it; tomorrow; (tonight for you) we climb 7,000 feet to well over 15,000 feet and hope to get down in elevation to find a camping spot low enough to allow for sleep, before dark.
Yesterday we rode Zippy to the highest elevation ever for us. We started at 8,500 feet in Kangding and topped Zheduo Pass at 13,900 feet in 35 kilometers, or 21.7 miles, all under construction/repair. For our Olympic Peninsula friends, that’s like taking the Hurricane Ridge Road, raising the sea level start to 3,000 feet above the Ridge, loading 80 pounds on your tandem before beginning. Oh, I forgot, put 1,000 people and hundreds of trucks and equipment on the now gravel/dirt/broken concrete road.
We are getting into Tibetan prefectures and seeing the dress and features of the minority population. After a 13,000 plus pass tomorrow, they will no longer be the minority. We are already seeing prayer flags flying, and old women turning prayer wheels as they walk, men dressed in huge leather cloaks with cowboy style hats and daggers. Everyone is friendly, and the air is finally clear!
We caught them 1,000 vertical meters later at the entrance to the summit tunnel to great exclamations of pleasure and another round of picture taking, with Zippy at the center. Lucky was busy flirting with one of the girls and got left out of the picture, again!
There were police and army personnel all over the place, protecting the tunnel no doubt, and we had to show our passports to be allowed through. We had heard horror stories about the tunnel, but found it reasonably well lit and smooth. As usual, when you worry, it is always unnecessary.
We have various obstacles as cyclists in America, but in Tibet the challenges are different that your usual yahoo yelling obscenities or throwing bottles. You move forward slowly, and the sea of black horned quadrupeds part like the Red Sea for Moses. After their passing, it is best to keep a close lookout for Yak bombs.
One year ago today we rode our tandem in Chengdu, China traffic in preparation for our journey across Tibetan China and through Southeast Asia. We are beginning a series of re-posts remembering this adventure. Follow us as we remember, or better yet, go to the link at left, In Search of Shangri-la and read the whole four months.
There must be a lot of people considering doing the Precipice Trail in Acadia National Park again this summer. From our New Bohemians.net stat numbers it is the most popular outdoor “hike” in America. We loved it. It’s easy as long as you don’t have a fear of heights. Go for it! While you are at it, check our our links (left) for adventures of a couple who found Precipice Trail very easy: across the Silk Road, Around Australia, In Search of Shangri-la etc., all by tandem bicycle, 40,000 miles worth.
This is not the Buddha. The complexity of religious imagery in Southeast Asia is staggering to the Western mind. As we meandered the region at twelve miles per hour on our tandem bicycle, we saw so many depictions of religious beings that we will be years sorting them all out, if we ever manage the task.
It appears the volcano in Iceland is not going to go back to sleep without causing mankind to take notice of the disruption possible. Thousands of flights have been canceled by the the ash cloud ejected from the eruption under a glacier. The ash is even more destructive to air traffic because some of it may be turned to glass by the ice before being ejected high into the air.We’ll just have to wait and see if this will last for weeks and cause major economic disruption in North Atlantic and European transportation, or fade away quietly. I wouldn’t bet on either.
This view is probably familiar to many in my generation who served in Vietnam in the 1960’s and 1970’s. It was taken, looking north, from a headland jutting out into the South China Sea, forming a barrier to weather, and no doubt troop movements, between South Vietnam and North Vietnam. Hai Van Pass, Vietnam.
A few years ago Claire and I traveled the Silk Road from Beijing to Istanbul on our tandem bicycle. In a small town in Azerbaijan, we saw this door sill with three horseshoes attached, pointing to the street. In the U.S. some people attach a horseshoe over their front door, point up, for good luck, and/or prosperity. We were, as usual ignorant in the local language, and unable to ask what this means. Not knowing is sometimes more interesting than knowing all. But I wouldn’t mind if someone from the Caucasus area would tell us.
ruins near Angkor Wat and Buddhist Monk, photo by Bob Rogers, bob rogers and claire rogers the new bohemians, newbohemians
There has been no Internet in Far West China (Xinjiang) since the violence between Han Chinese and the native Uighurs. Some reports have as many as 500,000 Hans leaving Xinjiang since the violence, and the Chinese government now allowing Hans to sell to anyone other than a Han if they leave. This could put a big time kibosh on the governments’s plans to flood the remote province with Hans.
Bob and Claire Rogers have moved their Shangri-la, 2009 Asian Adventure blogs to a First to Last blog format. Relive their adventures from Tibetan China through Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.
This is a video we took on the east side of the Himalayas, where the wash outs were many, and the Red Army was returning some units from the high mountains. Later they seemed to turn around and head back into Tibetan territory.
Mountains of Northern Laos is beautiful. Northern Laos, place of friendly people.